


Nothing Hurts (Like Your Mouth)

by Burnadette_dpdl, Rebness



Category: Interview With the Vampire (1994), Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Blood, Blood Drinking, Blood and Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Recovery, Vampire Sex, Vampires, Violence, well they're vampires harold
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:40:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23614633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burnadette_dpdl/pseuds/Burnadette_dpdl, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rebness/pseuds/Rebness
Summary: Lestat revisits Louis’ suicide attempt and the arduous healing period that followed. In the retelling from his point of view, it becomes clear that David’s accounting of events minimized the damage, in an effort to conceal the grim truth -- and the lasting damage Louis and Lestat did each other.In this confession and investigation, Lestat casts his lure out to draw his lover back to him, baited with pain and, for once, honesty.
Relationships: Lestat de Lioncourt/Louis de Pointe du Lac
Comments: 82
Kudos: 101





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexa_dean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexa_dean/gifts).



It took me several years to catch up on the media of the 20th century. I devoured it -- enjoy the pun -- in vampiric fashion, draining the books and films and endless turgid sitcoms of their cultural references and slang. _Here's looking at you, kid_ (idiot; I would have kept the love of my life) rubbed shoulders with _They're maggots, Michael_. No wonder I get slang all wrong. So sue me, Scotty.

I watched a lot of schlocky horror. I liked those films, and I often think about the silent angry cat returned from the grave in that one movie, glowering with a demonic outrage at being brought back from whatever it had seen to the indignity of a rotting, stinking half-life with its idiot family. _What nightmares may come,_ and all that.

And what if you saw nothing? What if hell doesn't exist, because it's absurd? What if no choirs nor angels greeted you, and instead you were brought back to your ungrateful whining existence and your agonised lover to start anew safe in the knowledge that there's nothing to worry about, this existence is all we have? (That's a quote from _him;_ I remember every line of that wretched book.)

Wouldn't you embrace the second chance?

Most of us would. I'm sure you, dear reader, would give almost anything to have those you loved and lost back with you as long as it wasn't going to be a Monkey's Paw scenario.

But some of us... some of us are just angry stinking cats taking it out on our idiot families.

Louis was one of those people.

And I'm not going to give you one of my fabulous tales of decadent Regency wallpaper and crushed velvet and half the coven -- hell, the whole coven -- crushing on me in this story. It's a trauma I keep locked away, one that hurts the hell out of me, and as usual I swallow it down and refuse to discuss it with anyone other than this Word document in this, the year of our Prince Lestat 2019. It's a tale of convalescence and the pain of watching someone you love going mad with grief for something lost that even he doesn't understand to this day. It's the tale of the months after Merrick, the witch who lasted all of a heartbeat in eternity but the one who nearly cost me the love of my life.

Here's pushing you into the fire myself, kid.


	2. Le Revenant

He hadn’t taken a drink from me since the 19th century. I had waited for an obscene amount of time to relive this communion with him, frustrated by Armand and time and then Akasha herself; the unforeseen consequence of my acceptance of her gift to craft me into a vessel nearly of her own potency was that even a droplet of my new vitality was fundamentally toxic as far as Louis was concerned. 

I didn’t even realize this was the price I’d paid until we were finally alone together. The sultry warmth and roiling sea breeze of Miami set a fine mood for a celebratory fuck, and I gave him my best flirtatious finger curlings to come and enjoy the spoils of war, my thumbnail already drawing a crimson streak for his pleasure across my chest. I could scarce stand the wait for him to close the distance between us, for that sweet release that can only come from being fed on in specifically this way, and in particular by his silken lips and kneading hands. The cruelty in his eyes might as well have been the harsh slap of an outsized fluorescent green warning label right across that fresh wound, barring my entry to Heaven itself, amen! No amount of debate -- or when that failed -- begging -- and when that failed, insulting -- would change his stance. So I accepted rejection like the chagrined cast-out, the spurned lover that I am doomed to play for eternity.

Reader, in short: I shut the fuck up about it. 

My ire didn’t make it into my empire-building pulp novels which followed, save for a few choice insults flung at him, if I mentioned him at all. But it bruised me to my very bones to know that he would flinch at the graze of my stone fingers, and how during our one-sided love-making he had turned away from the innocently pulsing vein in my neck even as I narrowed the space between our bodies to barely more than a breath. 

Could we even call it love-making? He gave me free rein of his supple flesh which I kneaded brutally in my hands as if he were Bernini’s Prosperina, and as unwilling as her, though he never uttered a word in protest, his penance for firmly sealing shut his mouth to the best I had to offer as a lover. And I played along anyway, burdened with my desperation sliding just beneath a calm seductive surface like a river under ice, yearning for him to stay with me, chasing him even in the confines of an embrace. Did I shield him from this? Was my performance convincing to him? He reached, he offered himself, as desperate as I for the hellish compromise that this amount of intimacy permitted, and I fell in with him, and into him, his limbs folding around my body like the deceptive fragile grace of swan’s wings. I’d still make attempts to tempt him to trip and cross over the hard line he’d set -- open a gash so close to his mouth he had but to kiss it to catch a taste of my hellfire, waiting till he was in the swoon to overcome his defences -- but despite any arrangement of my monstrous body and his soft and breakable one, he held his ground like the fucking citadel that he’s always been.

I have never been as hopelessly captivated by nor felt such a magnetic pull to a lover as I am by Louis. At our most tender moments, his body seems bespoke to mine alone; we communicate with minimal words; each and every ephemeral bloodsharing is etched in my memory as distinctly as the play of melody and rhythm to make harmony. From that first sublime taste of his smoky Creole blood on my undeserving tongue, to the stolen assignations at Rue Royale in countless nights through the 18th and 19th centuries, it’s all catalogued for my later mental perusal. But replays only go so far, and are never as good as the dolce moment I crave; the press of my finger under his chin, up and tilting it such that I can tuck down into the sloping canvas of his skin, his searching hand in my hair, telling me through touch that I’m _real_ \-- I fuck, therefore I am -- and I’m _wanted_. So forgive me for waving David (never as good a raconteur as he thinks he is) and the witch away that night in order that Louis and I could withdraw to my quarters to continue his recovery. I was starved for him, reader. 

What none of us ever said was that a vampire can’t be burned to a charcoal briquette in the heat of the Louisiana sun and be instantly rejuvenated into a man with ivory skin and glossy thick black hair like animal pelt within the space of one night. No witchcraft that I’ve witnessed can do this, either, no thanks to a certain witch who hovered with irritatingly wide eyes and spider-like form in my peripheral vision, nearly about to collapse into heaving dramatics for fear of being pushed aside by a crisis _she_ had created!

At any rate, he looked -- he was _ugly._

Don’t frown at me. I’m not that shallow. But there was no denying it: he was nightmarish to behold. In the shaft of yellowish courtyard light he had made a lurid figure, no hair on him whatsoever; no eyelashes, no eyebrows, nothing. The slow recovery in the nights which followed didn’t do much to stop my cringing and the very sight of him. The ever-present worry crease on his brow was barely discernible in the distorted flesh, skin scarred and festering like he had taken a vacation in Chernobyl (the 20th century references won’t stop coming, I warned you) and where it wasn’t wet with infection, or an ugly mottled purple like a man coming to the end of his life, it was ashen. The worst, and what at the time I could hardly handle really looking at for too long or risk slipping into hysterics myself: his legendary green eyes, their brilliance dimmed by red watering, bloodshot and staring out in a daze, seeking purchase on anything, but not seeming to recognize anyone or anything as familiar. 

But he didn’t flinch from me when I took him in my arms and whispered things from the heart which I don’t care to recount here. He didn’t even protest when part of his melted skin came away right in my grip. He only laid his head against me, and drank from me for long sublime sad minutes until I sank my fangs into him and completed the healing circle. 

He had always spoken to me with a current of pure overwhelming love when I had taken him, no matter what filthy lies poured from his mouth. And sure, it was still there, but there was something else which made me pull back from him in horror; I knew the taste of it, the chaotic bitter anger. I had tasted it centuries before in my beloved Nicolas: 

Madness. 

In French we call it _l’appel du vide_ \- the call of the void. Ever been crossing a bridge and felt that irresistible urge to jump? Wanted to veer into oncoming traffic? Well, my idiot fledgling had listened to that evil self-destructive impulse, and followed. 

In our courtyard, as our carefully-chosen nightblooms closed their petals against the shrieking morning birdsong, he dragged his coffin down the narrow scraping spiral stairs (I noted the scrapes alongside it the following night; I had hoped maybe he had fought against the sun. He hadn’t). He must have already been growing weak for the deathsleep. I couldn’t think of it, and yet, I couldn’t not think, with rising offence: How much time did he have in choosing the placement? Did he imagine David -- or I? -- coming upon it, did he care that it was a macabre stage he set for those he was Exiting, Stage Left?

I couldn’t ask him these things that felt like the gashes in my heart like those he so carelessly allowed happen to his coffin, his dinghy into the void. More importantly, was he still in this frame of mind? No way to know until he was sufficiently conscious to ask.

So yes, he let me take him in my arms and give him the first draught of my curative properties, and that felt like the beginnings of an answer and a choice, and I let that go right to my head and heart. My elation was dampened by us being in front of the wretched audience of two clinging to each other as if they weren’t as guilty as Lady Macbeth in this gutter theatrical. 

Louis could barely even make a seal with his broken and parched lips, and hadn’t the strength to really pull more than a small measure. But at least he was sentient enough to be taken somewhere softer where I might find a better angle with stacked pillows and sheets to protect his scorched angry skin.

Two centuries ago we had lain like this as he drank from me, the night I made him mine forever. It had been one of the most erotic and wonderful nights of my life. There was no erotic charge now, and if I cringed inwardly at the feel of him, I kept a firm grip and bid him _drink, take everything I have._

A few more weeks and I’d have him back. It would be natural and right and simple. 

I should have known: nothing with this man has ever been easy. 


	3. Awake

Let me start the tale from the night I finally woke up.

We all know that I was in something of a self-inflicted coma. I suffered from celestial jetlag, unprecedented and unpredictable, what the kids today might even call ‘executive dysfunction.’ Bless all the self-help books (a strange fad of the ‘90s, if you’re too young to remember). 

As I lay on the church floor, cosily weighted down by my usual daydreams and nightmares heavy as sheets of concrete, days and nights blending together, there came a shining stiletto ring of sound, from the top of my skull straight as a beam through my heart. It was dawn when this lightning-wrapped drill struck and kept me in torturous thrall as it shivered, the vibration keeping its pure note, a severing of something precious, lasting for hours until that night fell. It was like a guitar string plucked in slow motion, every vibration back and forth in voluptuous pain.

And in the death sleep, I could do nothing but endure until night fell. And finally I felt myself blinking against it, and my hands were my hands again, massaging my temples. I was alone in the church, and I asked my body to just roll to the side, to try to escape the sound, and once done, rolled into sitting up, the sound in fact retreated like a knife pulled partly free of its wound.

There was a comfortable chair nearby with a table, a stack of books; someone may have been sitting vigil, as I had felt them do, but no one had been here for several days.

I rose to my feet gingerly; appreciating the shower of dust which loaned my grey velvet jacket prestige. Swinging my stiffened arms experimentally, my thoughts swam, grasping for direction. The feel of my own tangled hair, as I brushed it out of my face, brought me back around to the pain that had lanced through my head… which rung still… there was something about that piercing sound that needed resolving. A low-pulsing electric current, a remnant of the sound? I ran my hand down my neck, searching for it, feeling a ripple at my chest, like the seam of water that might draw cleanly across it as I was walked along a sandbar in the ocean. I followed it on uneasy steps, my feet bare, the cool tile feeling so good on my skin. The pulse strengthened as I crossed the threshold out into the heavy moonlit air, the scents crowding around like autograph seekers. Chattering waxy leaves. What a pleasure to be out in the air, moving.

I needn’t tell you where I was going. My heart always leads me back to that same wretched property on that narrow street. _Go to him, go to him!_ my mind repeated like a mantra, but I pushed aside the rising horror within me; I often felt that urgent need to be with Louis. It didn’t mean. It couldn’t. You see-- 

He swore he would never leave me. 

I could sense the presence of David in the courtyard before I smelled his stuffy sandalwood cologne, and then I heard him, barely above a whisper: "Scatter the remains,” a pause, then: "If only the others were here."

Whose remains would be in our home? A rogue vampire come to steal souvenirs? Louis had complained of stolen books, pens… They can’t help it. They flock to Rue Royale like it’s a tourist wasteland.

The carriageway gate - always in need of a squirt of WD40 - announced my entry, and I found the courtyard mostly as I would have expected: lit up for the evening, a pool of light on the fountain trickling merrily, but, unexpectedly: a lustrous coffin in the center.

I drank in the sight of a pretty vampire fledgling knelt before it, face veiled by her voluminous hair, with scarlet silken skirts billowing a little in the light breeze. But for the creamy dark skin, she was a John Singer Sargent vixen. I needn’t turn my head to see David, his long legs drawn one higher than the other, almost an elfin crouch on the lower spiral steps. 

You know who was in that coffin, reader. And I knew by the coffin as I drew near, the shape of him, the narrow head and long limbs, it all clicked into place, the mystery solved, but I nearly stumbled on my way closer all the same. Blame it on the flagstones. I made some utterance, an angry, baffled cry of distress. Pain exploded in my chest. 

"So it's come to this, has it?" I choked. The ringing sound that had led me here had dissipated, leaving me the full audio clarity of the weepy vampiress. She turned to me with a face tear-slick bright as the red of her dress. She had her fingers tracing it, licking it. How performative was her entire posture! It sickened me. I looked at David blankly, still seated some safe distance away, probably terrified at the explosion of rage which would have overcome me if I had been more awake. I rubbed my face the way frustrated mortals do, massaging my eyebrow through to the bone.

How fortunate for him that I’d arrived before these imbeciles had scattered the ashes of my beloved. Nothing in Heaven nor Earth would have saved them, then. 

But I didn’t let on that I’d overheard his little plan. I needed him as a goddamn vampiric stethoscope. Then, as a punching bag. "Come here, David," I said, kindly, careful to stop the manic hateful grin which tried to find its way onto my face. He peered at me; eerily still as only our kind can be. "Come, and listen. I can't hear him.” I made the smallest of gestures to Louis. To remind him of my parental rights and preference, should he refuse: “I _made_ him. Listen, and tell me if he's there." 

David hesitated before finally slithering over, the whites of his eyes stark and large as those of the terrified black and white film actresses of old. "He's like coal, Lestat," he said, slickly dodging my question. "I haven't dared to touch him. Should we do it?" 

I wanted to rage, _Oh, you haven’t dared to touch him, yet you were readying to scatter his ashes!_ Instead, I cast him a grim smile. I don’t know what he read in my eyes, but he took a hesitant step back from me. 

I wanted to touch, but to do it, I would have to kneel. Get those mechanics working. Yes, I would touch him, my eyes raked over his form, how best to pull him up without breaking anything? The coffin was itself hateful, he couldn’t remain there. The little vampiress rose and was speaking to me, heaving her breasts higher and higher as if they would distract me, but I tuned her right out like an irritating ad on the radio. She gestured at the corpse with flailing moth hands. 

David had no answer for me, and I hadn’t really expected him to give me a straight answer, either because he heard nothing (as he claimed) or he refused to relay the message. Pathetic as she was, this vampiress might serve as a better tool. Perhaps even as a conduit, which I’d done a few times with fledglings, to read otherwise locked minds. My hand was on her bare shoulder, restrained, toying with the idea of crushing her bones… And I heard myself asking her if she could hear Louis, but in truth it was mostly a filler, a redirection of my attention to someone else because the red-hot anger was cresting again. 

She said, "Silence, but then he brought me over.” I turned to face her fully then, recovering from the whiplash of this shining new _factoid,_ as they say, holding onto her shoulder noticeably tighter. She went on: “I charmed him, I seduced him. He had no chance against my plan.” And my teeth clenched. Which she probably noticed, because she quickened her speech, sending a torrent of images, papercutting clippings of all of it, clutching at a dapper Louis in her mortal body mere nights ago, sneaking away a lock of his hair, gashing his wrist in a grotesque ritual, I waved my hand at her to stop it, I didn’t need this confessional vomit, and I was no priest. Which of them was worse now? The one who ensnared my Louis in her web of lies, or the one who apparently stood back and allowed her to do it? I gave David a withering glare, he flushed, but I continued on with the witch.

"Merrick," Her name felt like sandpaper in my mouth. "Listen as you've always been able to listen. Be the witch now, still, if you can't be the vampire.” She began to whine again and I shushed her. “Yes, I know, he made you. But a witch you were before that." I shot another glare at David, then back to her. Slowly, and as serious as I had been when asking if he wanted the Dark Gift over two hundred years ago: 

"Tell me if he wants to come back." 

It was a pregnant pause as she listened once again. How could I trust her answer regardless? If she answered No, I was still set on my course. If she answered that he was in any pain, what was I expected to do? Let him suffer? Finish him off like my poor horse? 

She had no answer, or refused to give it, and I had my arm around her, needing comfort even from this black widow spider -- and also, as a test of my will not to crush her to death and empty her of every drop of my Louis’s precious blood -- and because David was decidedly more repulsive, talking as if we weren’t on the precipice of losing Louis, as if this were a casual café chat about his ability to hear spirits -- or not hear them, when it _mattered_ \-- he was a rattling tin toy in my ear. 

This is exhausting and I’ve made my point.

You know what followed. They begged me to revive Louis, the audacity! As if I hadn’t already chosen that arduous task during my very restrained questioning of them, but I was stalling, and for what? I knew what needed be done, and the executive dysfunction merely lulled me into inaction for what really was only minutes. They spoke in gibberish and I thought of the cool church floor, how good my limbs felt at the particular angles it liked best. 

One thing that did give me pause is, as mentioned above in greater detail, how vociferously and frequently Louis had in fact refused my blood. And I told them now his reason, that I would make a fine durable monster out of him. I wanted them complicit with this choice WITH this information, though why I needed this, I didn’t know at the time. It mattered later. 

I would like to pause here to point out that Merrick’s response to this new information was her immediately bubbly reply about helping my lover -- not _hers_ \-- die, again, should he prefer that option, than become a better monster of my making. She had taken what she wanted, and very clearly, all these sweet words asking for his revival _minutes earlier_ were only to… what? Animate him enough to infect him once again with a yearning for death, so that she might luxuriate in an encore performance? With my endorsement? It was sinister, and glorious, oh, what a wonderful vampiress she would have made if she hadn’t pissed me the fuck off so very very deeply.

Some flowery encouragement from David was all I needed and then I began the process. I didn’t want my first taste of blood this evening to be my own, but there it was, smearing on my face as I bit my wrist open and painted the dry landscape of my Louis with it. If we could soften the flesh enough that it might be flexible, he might not fracture like burnt toast? My blood flowed across his face, I spread it on his neck, these would need to be working so he could drink for himself again.

It dawned on me that I might lessen the impact of my contribution watering it down with these two: "Help me, Merrick. Help me, David!” And they did follow, they knelt for the ritual I had started, a blood sacrifice to raise the dead. How he would hate this, if he knew what was happening. How he hated to be the center of attention, and how his sense of dignity would rail against soaking in a bath of blood. I was ashamed but I powered on, determined. What a mess. 

The fact is, being a vampire is grotesque and messy. Our very lives depend on blood and gore. It’s not all frills and lace and ivory gleaming skin, and so let me contradict David’s curiously prudish attempt to lie that Louis spoke to us that night. He didn’t. He shrieked and growled in pain, and if you think for one second that the suicidal and burned Louis de Pointe du Lac asked how his guests were, you’re as naive as Louis is.

The grotesque part follows this chapter. If you want to keep David’s image of Louis as the sainted, gentle, refined and uncomplaining mannequin in your mind, stop reading here. It’s time to recount the story of _Pet Semetary_ Louis. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rebness and I are thrilled with the feedback on this fic, it's so motivational to know ppl are hungry for more! It's a story we've been wanting to work out for a loooong time, and like a good bread dough, needed time to rise.


	4. Bridal Style

I like embarrassing romantic gestures, and so I carried him bridal style up to my room, kicking the door shut with my heel. _Alors,_ so he would make a mess of the bedsheets. Well, it would be worth it. I tried to tell that to myself as he dripped blood all over my vintage Italian rugs. I picked them up at a delightful store in Messina; when he was himself once again, I would thoroughly relish remonstrating with him that it was his fault I had to replace them.

Forgive me. Recounting my exquisite decor is a force of habit.

Anyway.

He rolled out of my arms and coughed up blood, which spattered across my fine Egpyti-- my sheets. I righted him, and peeled off my own stained jacket and shirt. I climbed onto the other side of the bed, cautiously. This was no romp in the sheets, but I was powerfully thrilled by the prospect of the task ahead. I had only enjoyed the briefest pleasure out in the courtyard and needed only to coax him gently to return to that bliss again. 

Wrong. Very wrong. 

I crawled close, whispering to him, and he jerked away so violently he nearly fell off the bed, so that I had to grab him around the torso and pull him close. It was awkward; his tree bark skin could break and he might start bleeding again if pulled too harshly. 

“Listen, beloved, I’m here, you’re safe,” I began, as kindly as I could, drawing him up. His wild staring eyes met mine briefly but he pushed at me with his elbow in my chest. He bared his perfectly white sharp teeth, exhaled a simmering hiss. “Louis, do you know where you are?” 

He didn’t seem to recognize it as a question. He stared at me with dumb animal fear. Trying to talk to him was pointless. My excitement for this moment was fast diminishing and hardening into a train determined to speed down its tracks, bad weather be damned. And it was what he wanted, I chanted internally to myself.

He writhed against me, a spitting furious feral cat, so I pulled him right into the center of the bed and straddled his waist, using my weight to still him. One last chance at simulating this as a romantic encounter, as I held his head still with one hand, and bent to kiss him with bleeding lips. Rough asphalt would be softer than this parody of a kiss, but it did seem to calm him for a brief enough moment such that I could gash my jugular and press that to his mouth instead. I hooked my arms under his shoulders, bracing his head, holding him prone, and felt him lock on and start to drink again. 

It was a far cry from the perfection I had been dreaming of for years. I had fantasized about this moment in so many ways: the argument, then the kiss, him giving in. The feel of his fangs against my throat which I had last felt one sublime spring night in 1860, a mere week before Claudia’s knife slit through the very same place. And he says I’m not a patient man! He still made pitiful attempts to push me away, or scrabble defensively with his broken fingernails at my naked back, damn him.

And then, he kicked me off the bed.

That was all I needed. I spat my rage and disgust at him for putting me in this position, for doing this to himself as if he had the _right,_ as if I didn’t own him. I was truly awake now, and my damnable temper came bursting forward as it always does. 

I grabbed at his ankle and pulled him close to me, only for him to land a well-placed kick on my chest. I was sent sprawling, and leapt up to stand over him in rage. “I should throw you off the balcony, you miserable wretch!” I spat. “Let the rats pick at what’s left of you, turn it round on you for once!” I shouted at him, and enjoyed how the very glass in the windows shook with my fury. “You look like a goddamn order of oily spare ribs, with eyes!” 

He pulled back from me, his eyes narrowed with hate. He growled something, but no discernible words came out. 

And then I had him tight in my arms, bundled in the sheet, kicking and flailing, and I was shouting more and more creative curses and threats as I stormed through the upper parlor, knocking over his precious desk in our wake, down the hall, threw him into the bathtub. While he was straining at his silky net, I twisted the knobs and let loose the water. 

(We had renovated this up to modern standards, of course we had, and not only was the hot water ridiculously hot by the same speed as a Lamborghini Aventador takes to get to 60 MPH, at a temperature well over enough to boil your eggs in; it comes out as wickedly fast. Ain’t nobody got the time to wait for a luxurious hellfire bath to drown one’s lover in.)

“Beg me,” I said, and aimed my most fiendish, cruel grin down at him, “for air.” I gripped his fragile neck in my monstrously powerful hands, and the fabric twisted into knots by thought alone, and the hot water fast shrink wrapped him. As the water swelled against his sharp cheekbones he must have remembered the mortal terror of drowning, and tried to rise, but I bore down on him, urged him back until his skull hit the bottom once again. When the water sat a good several inches above his nose, I flicked the faucet off without losing my grip and the silence was so sweet, punctuated only by drips and his much-weakened watery struggles. 

All of his stinking body was now wrapped in a glowing funerary shroud, and he let his limbs loosen and sink, tension leaking out as the heat penetrated him. His hands had found each other inside his artisanal strait-jacket, his thumb lightly stroking the back of his other hand, something he had done contemplatively in the past. 

“Were you chilled, dearest?” I asked, and I flashed him my best annoying grin. 

He blinked, and actually looked at me steadily. Even distorted by the lens of water between us, I watched rapt at the smallest hint of green within the bloodshot mess that were his eyes. Disappointment crested in me briefly - I thought they would have been restored easily, and I didn’t want to think about the possibility that they might never recover. He blinked again, more slowly, a few air bubbles slipping out of his nose to kiss the surface. Oh, it was ludicrous. I would have laughed if not for how I was still squeezing his throat shut. A vision of him from the past stood over me surely, dismayed that this was our current state of affairs. 

This is how Merrick and David found us some minutes later, Merrick’s plaintive little gasp striking rudely. They hung in the doorway like the creeps that they are, and of course, faces painted with the kind of pained blend of outrage and pity I’d come to expect from David at least, and almost always deserved, certainly now as I was apparently drowning my burnt toast of a lover.

“We don’t _breathe,_ remember?” I said, only sparing him a glance, so that the wet tendrils of my fallen hair might conceal my expression. 

He paused: “Can we... assist in any way?” he offered finally. So empty. “Ah, I know where the shampoo is-”

“He’s bald as a baby, David. Next idea?” 

Merrick’s eyes darted from me to David, unsure of whose loyalty she should be gardening. “I could perform a healing spell, it might-”

“As mentioned, he has no hair for any of your rituals, witch.” I checked on Louis, his eyes had slipped closed, he seemed to be resting. “He has no parts to spare.” I stood, hesitant, a hand out should Louis try to move, and then got out of the tub without disturbing him. It was like dismounting a horse. One soaked leg after the other, the bathmat overwhelmed at the amount of water, tucked my thumbs in where my jeans rode low from the weight, hooked them at the low dip of what artists call the Adonis muscles, and slid it all down and off. 

I put my hands on my hips. “Do you mind? Really?” and shouldered my way through them and noted Merrick’s performative damsel fall into David’s arms, as if I’d really knocked her off balance. “Don’t you dare touch him, by the way!” I called out without turning. They followed me like wobbly ducklings to my room, and again, there were the theatrical gasps at the blood splatter left from my Barbecue Beau and the shattered bedpost from when I was jettisoned off my own bed.

It had been so long since I’d last really been in my own room that I nearly forgot where we kept the blankets. _Alors,_ the bed was still a bed, even with a broken bedpost, and David did step forward to help replace the sheets, he at the opposite side to help with the corners, while Merrick wiggled in the doorway with her hand on the frame, tethering her in place, unsure whether _she_ was allowed entry (she _wasn’t_ ). Thirsty as a pawnbroker, she roved over our possessions with hard glittering eyes.

I threw a few more pillows at the headboard, and chose two dark jewel-toned chenille blankets out of the wardrobe, favorites of Louis’s, for their lustrous softness and warmth. 

“Don’t you think we oughtn’t put such nice bedding down? Maybe something less expensive--” David ventured. What kind of cheap bastard did he take me for?

“Oh? Should we put something more disposable down? _Towels,_ instead?” I said seriously, aligning the chenilles one on top of the other on one side of the bed, with gentle malice. David backed up out of my steady path right towards him, moving him closer to Merrick. “Perhaps spread out some newspapers on the floor?” I spread my hands. “In case he has another accident? Is that what we should do, David?” 

“Don’t be so churlish, I didn’t mean-”

“Is Louis a little puppy who hasn’t yet been housebroken? Is that what he is to you, David?” I stood chest to chest with him, still nude, my face so close that he recoiled from the heat of my breath. He understood the threat -- _fight me!_ \-- the inch or so in height he had over me be damned. 

“No. No!” he coughed. “Bloody hell, of course not!” he spluttered, which made me happy, but I didn’t smile. “My dear Lestat, I only meant-”

I shifted my weight, my body pressed in even closer, a hair away from touching him. I took my cue from several of the gangster movies I had devoured (I adored this gesture - it was so _deliciously_ homerotic). In practice, it was even better; easy to appreciate the power game that it was, especially since I was still fully naked and confident in my dominance. Something so deviously primordial about two men standing chest to chest, perhaps rocking slightly, daring each other to take the first shot, blink first, invite the violence. If he had been Louis, it would have ended in sex. But it wasn’t Louis, so he wasn’t safe. I let the moment surge to a fever pitch in utter silence as he stared right back at me, clenching his teeth so that the muscle in his jaw shivered enticingly. 

I let the roiling tension linger a moment more, then turned away from him without a backward glance, back to my Louis. 

Louis: as still as driftwood in the water, his eyes blessedly closed, not a single tiny bubble of movement as I knelt down beside him. He was once again in a coffin of sorts, the water made a glass top to it, like Snow White’s. Tranquil, that’s what he was. I reached out with trepidation, not looking for another hysterical episode. My hand eased into the still-hot water, only a little murky with blood and bits of burnt skin that had shaken free when he went _into_ the tub. No movement when I touched his wrapped shoulder, none when I squeezed his arm. What a goddamn fucking relief.

It didn’t take much effort, then, to heft him up, his body breaking the surface of the water like a boulder when the tide recedes. The man has never been a burden to me to carry. But he was so fragile and light that my mouth fell open with despair. I hated peeling the wet and blood-stained sheet from his body, but I couldn’t very well leave him in it. This was uncharted territory, healing a dessicated and severely sunburnt creature of the night, what if being waterlogged started to loosen his skin away? What if the sheet pulled flesh away with it? 

It didn’t. The sheet fell away easily, and recoiled back, collapsing in on itself like a snake’s shed skin as I pulled him out, and enveloped him in a thick, fluffy, green towel. I set him on the edge of the tub and dabbed his head and his face dry; even his feet got careful attention. 

He stirred then, writhed, and even made some pained noises that all made torturous little cuts into my heart each time I pressed too hard, or had him sitting at a bad angle, and I shushed him as kindly as I possibly could, humming to him an old Creole song he had always loved. 

David and his little witch no longer hovered; I could hear them talking and clattering around in the downstairs parlor. 

As I gathered Louis into my arms bridal style once again, he whined pitifully at his body being folded in on itself at all, so when I got him into bed, he had to be settled in flat on his back. With the top sheet, I wrapped him up again, his arms in their own folds so he couldn’t scratch himself, and legs bound so he couldn’t roll off the bed. Another layer was a thick down comforter, and then the chenille blankets nestled in against his cheeks and neck, so that he could feel them. 

Once he was more or less a marshmallow in the center of the bed, I eased the length of my body up against his swaddled form, placing an arm around his middle, and continued to hum the song. In a short while he had settled into quiet. I would have to learn his expressions with all the new creases in his forehead, but this was clearly dozing. I felt like a child, naked, clinging to the only comfort I had, and my heart swelled tight inside my chest for this stupid bastard who had done this stupid thing that I could do nothing but stupidly try to fix. Still, I would have stayed with him for the few hours left of the night, if not for the fact that I was running on empty. Beyond empty; I was running on the fumes of blood at this point. And more importantly, he needed it, too. 

I shucked on a dry pair of skinny jeans and a simple sweater, socks, and, of course, a thick gold watch. I went downstairs to check in on my useless watchmen. 

“I’m going out to hunt,” I said to them, leaning into the parlor as I pulled my boots on. They eyed me warily. “I need more blood to feed Marat in there, so watch over him while I’m gone.” I looked from one to the other of them to see if I’d hit ‘Enter’ on that directive. 

“Yes, of course,” said David with that familiar note of Anglo obsequiousness I expected. “We shall try our best.” 

“You won’t try,” I said airily. “If I get back and you’ve harmed a hair on his head -- oops!” and here I gasped, and showed them how a true actor feigns shock. “Too late, I guess!” I pulled open the door to the flat. “If you let any harm come to him, you may as well climb into that coffin in the courtyard yourselves. Cheerio, old man!” 

And with that, I launched myself into the humid air of our city. Louis just needed some Creole comfort food. I’d see to it that he got the best. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The scene @alexa_dean's been waiting for! We had SUCH a good time writing it, we hope you enjoy reading it.


	5. Salve

I hit the cobblestones at a run, gasping for fresh air as if I’d broken out of a smoker’s den. My wheat-dry veins had all unionized against me, crying out for blood, _Feed me, Seymour!_ All that time I’d slept loomed backwards away from me, fueling my ravenous disposition. My nursemaids during my coma had clearly been sadly lacking. 

In minutes I was stalking towards the city’s watering holes, huffing like a dragon, gnashing my teeth. I fantasized about different victims, big hulking homophobes who might put up a delicious fight, scrawny but worthy drug dealers further east… or delicate little college girls and boys on Bourbon with sweet innocent blood that I might sample in quantity and send back to their dorms in cabs I pay for with wads of cash upfront. Didn’t matter what day of the week it was, they were always there, in come-hither outfits, and I’d narrow in on them, answering the call of “Juicy” on their velour pants. An apt description for this tasty fruit. 

I was in no mood to play though, and then, a thought caught me: I would wake the next night and have to feed him again. Louis. My mind swam with the horror of his charred face and body, his cooked meat scent masking his old familiar coffee and verbena... I shivered, a sail whipped in the wind. Had to think of what to do about him. Had I ever needed a bottle to crawl into to heal my shattered heart more than I did right now? 

Bourbon street was still lively at this hour. I checked my heavy watch: still two hours until the street cleaners and the sun would be out.

A drunk homeless man with a body like a turtle swung his grizzled head towards me and shook his fluorescent drink cup, half full of change. I considered drowning myself in him, sinking down with him somewhere romantic like the broken shells of the cemetery nearby, but rejected that thought; alcohol might hinder Louis’s healing. The man was closer now, had been talking at me, and pointedly looking at my watch, so I shook myself alive again. “Sorry, no change.” He ambled back away, kept looking back at me over his shoulder like I might fall, and he’d have a new watch. Fat chance, buddy. 

A vision came to me of a long-ago night when Louis and I had tucked ourselves into a worn old booth at the back of Lafitte's in the months before I had taken my extended siesta on the floor. He had not been sufficiently hungry to choose a victim, and I kept elbowing him, egging him on to this one, or that one.

***

"Oh, come on!" I implored, gesturing across the room. "Surely this one!" 

A tall woman wrapped in sausage-tight red leather gyrated on the dance floor. She was one of these overly-plastic-faced women of recent times, chasing her youth with every slice and tuck to her face. Garish bottle blonde hair and make-up parodying a miasma of eras she hadn’t experienced. I was utterly charmed with how she danced with such abandon, calling out “This is my _jam!”_ to no one in particular. I just adored women like this. We made eye contact and I licked my lips at her. 

Louis was making angel wings with his thumbs in the condensation on his glass, ignoring everyone - even me.

"She's a murderer..." I whispered, coming close to his ear, as if that mattered in the slightest to him. My nose brushed up against his cartilage; I loved the erotic charge between us when I did that, pitched my voice for him alone. I tipped my head towards Red Leather. My muscles twitched and I drew back, ready to pounce for her with or without his goddamned approval.

"Was it self-defense?" he dared question me -- as if _that_ mattered in the least bit to him -- without looking up, his hands still on the glass. Have I ever been this envious of an inanimate object, being so methodically and lovingly stroked?

I had already half risen from the booth. I let myself fully glare back at him for a beat before I eased slowly back down onto my wretched perch beside him. "Goddamnit, Louis! You treat me like a dog begging for a treat!’ I ruffled my own hair as I bristled, wanting him to notice. “It was _premeditated."_ And then, adding for impact, as if Louis didn’t know the word, "she _planned_ it. Well in advance."

"Still," he said, peering at her from across the room, like she was an exotic bird. It looked like he was going to add something of real substance to our conversation and I was as taut as a pulled bow waiting for it. “Still,” he concluded with his frustrating circular logic, and I let out a ragged frustrated sigh.

Another few years seemed to pass as he held me there trapped, his dog on a short and fashionably bedazzled leash. But the next song was melancholy and suited to his studied detachment, and he finally looked at me. There was that heated pause while the music played, and his eyes turned from soft dreamy verdant to glittering jade: 

_There were times when I could_   
_Have murdered her_   
_But you know, I would hate_   
_Anything to happen to her_

‘All right,’ he said. “Go.” 

And I did. I would take on the world for him.

He has always refused to share any kill with me, but he didn’t refuse the bloody kiss I gifted him once I was done. The rough taste of narcotized blood -- always a happy accident, to finish off someone who has taken a cocktail of drugs -- dismantles his defenses. 

We walked home together with his arm looped through mine, woozy and giggling. I knew even that night that it would be A Good Memory to store away for future use when he annoyed me too much. 

We tripped and landed together on the stairs at the Rue Royale, where I caught him in my arms. With our chests pressed together and the delicious heat pulsing through us both, we had a very serious and brief conversation wherein we came to the conclusion that it was one of the only places in our lair where we hadn’t had sex, so we corrected that oversight. A surprising amount of leverage can be achieved on steps, and the spindles of banisters.

***

That sublime night had come to my mind because in rejecting alcohol as the drug of choice to comfort him, I knew what _would_ work without a potential spiral.

What I wanted were users, then, not dealers. I booked it to the Pontchartrain Expressway, where there were always a few addicts skulking about in the high grass, shooting up or coming down off a high. They’re perfect bait for the dealers; I’ve even given them money, followed as they made their calls from burner phones, and led me right to my real prey. 

And sometimes, when I need them, they are more than amenable to their sporadically-visiting sweet young blond friend who just wants to lie in their arms for an hour or so. 

Anyway, you’ve read a thousand different descriptions of me hypnotizing prey and killing them, and you aren’t here for the umpteenth variation on that story, so let me cut back to when I returned to my room that night and commenced what would be a regular feeding program. 

Cut scene. Join us back in the Master Bedroom, Rue Royale.

Revitalized, and in such a good mood, it hardly even bothered me to find Louis growling in his bindings, an angry little mummy. I came in through the balcony like Peter Pan and sat beside him on the bed, my own prim and gentle Wendy Darling. He quickly disabused me of that Romantic notion as he growled and struggled to get free, and made a choked noise. I put a hand on his chest reassuringly. He must have remembered that I was the one who’d attacked him less than an hour earlier, because he tried to snap his fangs at that hand. I raised the other wrist to my mouth and bit into it, then hovered over him to let the thick blood trickle into his mouth.

“Drink,” I bid him. “You need to drink.”

He fixed me with a glower though he complied, but as he swallowed, he cried out in anguished pain and snapped at my hand again, a feral dog fighting back in fear. 

That was when, as he repeated the snaps quite ineffectually, dear reader, it dawned on me _why_ he’d given me such stiff rebukes. His throat must be burnt _on the inside as well,_ and he had been in pain when he’d tried to drink, and here, I’d tried to force him. The kicks were defensive, not offensive. I froze as wave after wave of frothy shame crashed against the newly-constructed lighthouse of valium housing my emotions. Shame could find the spaces and cracks in the brick, but it couldn’t ruin me the way it might have done if I hadn’t consumed the drugged victim, down to the last drop. 

So, no drinking. 

Taking up a bowl from my vanity (yes we do still use them, it’s nostalgic for me) and a pair of scissors, I gashed my wrist and filled it halfway. 

I summoned a washcloth from its rung with my hand. I soaked the cloth in the blood, the deep red crawled up the virgin cloth. My life’s blood for my lifeblood. I pressed it to his lips and he eased just a tiny bit back into his comforter. His eyelids fluttered as I kept dipping and pressing, my heart glorying as I could see the flesh taking it in. I painted deep red around his mouth, then his chin, and along his throat, feeling him soften with what I could only identify as relief in my grasp.

“You’re back--” said David, poking his head in the doorway.

“Of course I’m back. What did you think I was going to do?”

“I thought you might have abandoned us. What are you... doing?” his eyes flicked to the bowl in my lap as I settled in next to the gradually relaxing revenant. 

“Now, _mon ami._ Why don’t you make yourself useful and get the fuck out of my room?” His expression had quickened at “useful” and then wilted when I gestured at the hallway with the spread legs of the bloodied scissors. He hesitated again and then gave one of his cheap little bows, and backed out, pulled the door shut with him. I locked it with a little mental click, more for the principal of the thing than security, as he could just as easily flick it back. Oh well. 

When the bowl had emptied, I placed it on the table near the bed. I held Louis close as he struggled in my hold as Mojo did when he tired of pets. And like Mojo, he gradually quietened and gave in to my superior strength. I bit my own tongue and gripped his jaw, bringing it close. He tried to turn from me, but I captured his mouth and let blood slide down his throat. 

_I don’t mean to hurt you, not this time,_ I tried to tell him through the blood, though he would never believe me even if he were lucid. He cried out with ragged protestations at the pain of drinking rather than his usual moral morass. I wished he understood how much it hurt _me -_ \- how much it hurts me still --to think on it. 

But I kept thinking of the way his green eyes had met me in the night at that club, when he had been so much mine, my companion, and speaking in that wordless understanding love. Words had always diminished things between us. 

And yet all I wanted was one word from him, instead of these protracted tortured howls of distress. If only his eyes would meet mine, if only he _saw_. 

Afterwards, when I bundled him, whimpering and distrustful into the coffin with me (I did not generally use coffins for the deathsleep in this modern world with automatic blinds and blackout curtains, but I needed him close and safe through the day with me) I whispered foolish, sentimental things to him and thought of green eyes. 

Not his beautiful gentle eyes, now. 

Hers. The witch. 

_‘I charmed him, seduced him. He had no choice against my plan.’_

I would take on the world for him.


	6. Tell Me No Lies

The next night, I woke with Louis encircled tight in my arms, his slight frame slotted atop my body just the way we’d done centuries ago. With his head on my chest, no skin contact, I could pretend for a few tender moments that the entirety of the night before had been one of the horrific nightmares in High Definition that bless the undead. It was good for my sore heart, but I couldn’t really indulge such a concept, peeling myself out and snapping closed all the heavy coffin locks as I shut the lid firmly. There was work to do. 

I showered and slid into something more intimidating (and that wouldn’t show bloodstains, if it came to that): black skinny jeans, a “distressed” ripped t-shirt with a sliver of neckline gaping open, a wicked Gucci blazer with sharp shoulders and even sharper lapels. I yanked my hair back in a low ponytail as I bounded down the steps. 

I wasn’t surprised that they weren’t here, but then again, they might still be sleeping. This suited me just fine, I could have time to myself for the first time in some 24 hours. 

The courtyard had been cleaned spotless; no scraped-sided coffin, no burnt ashes of incense (noted because it had annoyed me peripherally last night), no blood on the flagstones -- and there definitely had been spillage. This cleanliness fit well with my earlier childish fantasy that nothing had happened, but the flagstones where the crime took place were fresh, newly placed. Older stones surrounded them and it was easy to note the differences; the veteran flagstones had cracks from decades of furniture rearrangement, discoloration from sunlight, and well-trodden weathering.

Back in the house, I took stock of each room, scanning for anything out of place. David had a number of his things tucked here and there, which was to be expected; several of his books had found homes on Louis’ shelf. He had a few coats in the closet downstairs. But David wasn’t living here, I could see that. 

Upstairs, I went through the bathroom (spotless as a showroom), the tiny bedroom -- for a tiny daughter -- with a view of the courtyard that David had converted into something of a little office for himself, but rarely used. I checked closets, rifled through shelves, not knowing what I hunted, but knowing as surely as when I hiked the hills and dales of the Auvergne, that my elusive prey was out there, whatever it ended up being. 

Dissatisfied, I checked on my coffin, still shut and locked, no sound coming from it. Good. Fine.

Adjacent to the master bedroom was the smaller room Louis had essentially called his own, more as a repository for his things, or as a place to be alone, than to sleep in. I slumped into his thickly cushioned reading chair, throwing my leg over one of the fat arms of the chair. Everything was tidy here, insomuch as too many books stacked on every horizontal surface was “tidy.” Something was amiss, but it evaded me; a rabbit hitting a trap loose but skittering off into the underbrush, uncaught. 

His windows opened wide when I commanded them silently to do so, the streetnoise carried in on the warm breeze, lovely and calming to me. Hooves beat out a staccato on the cobblestones, rhythmic enough to make structure for music and I stroked my chin, my lips, it would be so easy to follow it out to hunt. I’d need to do it before another session with Louis, but I didn’t thirst. It was a happy lingering side effect of the Benzos.

David and Merrick came home and ruined the moment, of course. 

I met them in the back parlor and settled in with them. We made small talk for a good 20 minutes or so -- I was checking my watch, I had to butter them up at least a little. Playing good cop/bad cop as one person was risky enough. I didn’t want my suspects fearing my wrath so much that they disappeared altogether! No, I had to have some patience, as I would with trapping animals. 

"It’s not complete," I finally said, addressing the elephant in the coffin upstairs. "It requires more blood." I heard my own voice drop a register on that.

The mood had shifted abruptly as I looked from one to the other of them. They waited on thin ice, unblinking, not daring to glance at one another. Merrick sat beside me on the settee, either looking at her own hands to admire the play of the light on her newly preternatural fingernails, or to make eye contact with me with green slitted eyes, trying to read my thoughts. I felt her tickling there at the back of my skull. It was very rude. But I also knew what it was like as a fledgling, emotions sliding around like the iridescence of an oil spill. I couldn’t entirely blame her for struggling to focus, or for trying to pick my brain. 

I went on. "It _requires,"_ I said, "that I hunt for Louis, and he drinks from me, every night. It requires no less than that to give him all the strength that's mine to give and not lose. I want him to take it now without argument, as much for my sake, perhaps, as his own." It disgusted me to have to lay it out in such an unsexy manner, again, reader, considering how much I’d longed for this very thing and to have it in this form was nearly beyond repugnance.

“Has he said anything? Is he speaking yet?” said David.

“No.” I shifted, crossed my legs. Amended, “It’s been one night, David. He howls, hisses. He can make vocal noises. So I expect speech will happen soon.”

“That’s good, I’m so very pleased.” David said, clasping and unclasping his hands in his lap. “Is there anything we can do to ease your burden?” 

I suppressed the stern rebuke that I would have liked to make at the word ‘burden’ associated with my beloved six feet of burnt toast, but he had a point. 

Merrick’s fidgeting was getting on my nerves. She thirsted. "Take Merrick with you, and go out now and feed to replenish what you've lost.” I said. Then, I added, because you catch more guilty flies with honey and all that nonsense: “Teach her, David, what she needs to know, though I think she is well versed in everything already. I think that Louis, in the little time he had last night, has instructed her rather well."

Merrick lit up like the 4th of July with the praise. “Yes, my sweet Master was wonderfully informative, and I saw visions when he made me, I saw his past with you, here, in this home,” she flung out her hands. “And even his time before, as a mortal, oh! His brother, with the bright eyes and high spirits--” 

And here I spare you, reader, from the monologue I let Merrick lay out. Fledglings get themselves into such a lather. I nodded and smiled, and David nodded and smiled. 

I let Merrick take one of my hands in hers and squeeze it for emphasis on parts of her story: here was a woman who loved to hear the sound of her own voice almost as much as I did mine! I also turned to David when she gestured to him to include him in the story, and he appeared to settle back, and purse his lips, not interjecting where I could see he wanted to do so. There was something about the pair of them, one talking like a geyser erupting from her lips, the other as tight as Fort Knox. 

She stopped talking and I baited the hook with something as Juicy as the delicacy of those college students.

I took both of her hands in mine, as if for marriage vows. Solemnly, watching her expression as my words flowed: "I welcome you into our coven, my dearest Merrick, and it’s precisely my desire that we all be fit companions for each other. I'll give my blood to you if you want it.” Her eyes widened, her hands rose up out of the cradle of mine, her long fingers fluttering at her breasts, just like someone seeing their numbers all fall into place on screen in the lottery. Perfect. “Merrick, it's what I want above anything else, I assure you. But it is your choice whether or not you take the Dark Gift from me again. Once you drink from me, you'll be quite as strong as David and Louis.”

"Yes, I want it," she fingered her double-strand pearl necklace, voice cracking with joy before I’d even finished speaking, my little rabbit crossing into the loop of rope. She cupped my face in her hands and pressed her lips to mine once, then a few more times. "But I need to hunt first, do I not?" She leaned back with a wicked little smile, her newborn fangs glinting, and I nodded, rising to my feet. She followed me up, smoothing her red dress, and now that it lay straight and open, I could see it was the very same from last night. Blood stains from her… donation. She hadn’t even changed her dress. I pointedly ignored it.

She didn’t _need_ to hunt first, or at all, but I wasn’t about to make good on my offer this very minute, anyway. So much the better for my bloody schedule tonight. 

At the front door, I hugged them each warmly, letting Merrick hold on at least a beat longer than I would have liked, but her dark hair was voluminous, wavy, silky, and it briefly reminded me of Louis’ hair. I waved as they took off together, her heels clacking like little hooves. “Behave yourselves, kids! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”

David stopped, looked back over his shoulder, “So we _should_ behave ourselves? Or not? Not to worry, we wouldn’t think of doing anything naughty _without_ you, beloved boss.” He gave me a wry smile, and taking Merrick’s hand, they disappeared around the corner.

I went to the foot of the stairs and peered up. I listened with all my vampiric senses, and heard only the breeze flapping the curtains on the window I’d left open, no rattling coffin from an old horror flick. He might be too weak for even that much, but it was a risk I’d have to take. 

The Pontchartrain Expressway held an even more succulent meal for the second night in a row: Ivoire, one of my favorite girls, was squirreled into a corner of her filthy trailer. Ever the gentleman, I’d brought her the expensive Imperial Brut champagne she preferred to wash her Benzos down with, and I even left both her and her girlfriend alive and drenched in bliss from the workings of my fingers. The way the low light played on the spilled Moet & Chandon mixed with their own slick on their creamy open thighs, as they dozed in each other’s arms, was a worthy composition for a realist painting, but it would be such an invasion of privacy to even take a digital picture. You know, reader, I really wouldn’t have bothered with this chivalrous treatment of my trailer girls, but for the endorphins from orgasm that flavor the blood into such a delicacy. And didn’t Louis still deserve the best? 

I alighted on the balcony outside of Louis’ room, my coat falling closed like dark wings. As I opened his solitary confinement, Louis grumbled but was not terribly agitated. He didn’t seem to recognize me, or even want to look at me -- which stung, let’s be real, as they say -- but there was no real fight in him as he let me haul him up and bring him to the first station of our new nightly cross, a nearly boiling hot bath. As his feet sunk heels first into the water, he hissed, adjusting to the temperature and seep of the heat on his broken skin, not suffering. 

Totally underwater, he was still and blinked slowly, looking around. Even the whites of his eyes were an angry pinkish-red. I sat on the closed toilet that only the contractors and cleaning crews ever used, my elbows on my knees. I twisted one of the thick platinum rings on my fingers and waited. There was a freshly comfortable numbness running through me from the victims, and I wanted to do something soothing for him. I stood, and seeing that he moved not one limb to follow, I stole into his room and looked for a book of poetry I might read aloud.

The shelves were as I’d left them, and I bobbed around, rubbing the back of my neck as I shopped through his favorites; Dickinson, Yeats, Keats, Frost. I was struck again by the same nagging feeling that something was _off_ here. I shut the windows by hand, and made another, closer inspection of the room. 

Two leather bound books stood like a teepee together, where most of the others sat properly vertically or horizontally. I slid the forward slash of the two of them out, and a balled up piece of white silk followed, snagged on the book. Unfurling it, there was a mark made in brown dried blood, a press of lips in a kiss, most definitely not lipstick. I balled up the silk, wrapping the kiss inside protectively, and pocketed it.

The book in my hand was Emily Dickinson’s, suitable enough.

I spent an enjoyable better part of an hour reading aloud to my waterlogged patient, unsure whether he could hear the words with clarity or not, but I went to all the effort of intonation and cadence that I would have, had I been on stage performing it, regardless. Even if he couldn’t parse the words, surely the emotion behind them found its way into his heart with the heat of the water.

 _“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,”_ I read, believing fully in the words as if I’d written them myself. _“ — and sings the tunes without the words — and never stops at all.”_ Oh, Emily. It was the gospel truth she wrote. 

After that, the next station of the cross was made easier by draining the tub before I attempted to move his body, followed by a thorough fluffy toweling pat-dry of his rough skin as he lay still. Naked, and heated, he was compliant as I dried him, and reader, it tore at my heart that even these gentle touches shed too many blackened bits of his skin. His eyes were listlessly aimed at the ceiling, so I finally had a chance to really inspect his entire anatomy, and let me admit here, that I was oddly reassured to see that his manhood was, although also burned, intact! Thank the gods that it had not fallen off like some of the outer singed skin.

And then there was the act of bundling him back up in soft sheets and blankets for planting back into bed. There were only a few whimpered cries of protest but I ignored these like a proper orderly must do; after all, look how far we’d come in just one night, no kicking or snapping of fangs! It wasn’t perfect but I preferred him this way than fighting me every step of the goddamn way.

In bed, I propped up beside him on one elbow, the bowl of my freshly poured blood nestled in between us. I had a glove of sorts made of blood-soaked towel and again fed it around the skin of his mouth and throat, looking utterly gruesome and clownish, this deep red. I told myself the flesh had improved! It had slightly more give than tree bark, right? But it took a hell of a lot of imagination. In truth, his face and neck were a little more like well-done steak, at least. I laughed a little, and didn’t realize the tears streaking down my face until I tasted them, hot and salty, on my lips.

Sometimes he watched me, and I spoke to him gently, and told him what I was doing, or I hummed softly. He was like an infant, responding seemingly at his own whim rather than to my input. He didn’t -- couldn’t speak, but growl or cry out petulantly. I didn’t know if he could hear me at all. 

When I felt it was time to try again with feeding, his shoulders rose defensively; he fought futilely against his bonds when I put my slit wrist firmly to his lips. He had no choice but to venture a taste at what I had to offer, more by accident in his struggling than intentionally, his tongue lingered on the slickness at the open wound, curious. Catlike, he lapped at the slow stream. I regarded him steadily, and noted this for the next feeding session. 

I had to keep reopening the wound because he drank so slowly and gently, but my persistence won through as the feline licks gradually grew into sucking, and then the blood flowed freely into his mouth. I breathed out with some relief, settling into my half-raised position. I could see the tiny trembling swallows of that precious stream, and the drugs went down with it. After about half an hour, energy spent, his eyelids slid shut, and he fell into sleep. I fished one of his hands out of the blankets, and placed our palms together, examining that rough skin contrasted against my polished marble. Would we ever be the same material again? Flesh of my flesh… Was he in there at all? Agony, that he didn’t call my name or meet my gaze. Was his brain even functioning save for the instinctual feeding, sleeping, and cringing from pain. What the hell was I resuscitating? 

An ugly flash of anger overtook me, and was gone almost as soon as I started to crush his hand with rage. And then it was gone, and I briefly yielded to the pleasure of lacing my fingers in his slack grasp, and kissed the back of his hand. 

He liked things like that. He liked it when I was gentle. 

\---

David and Merrick returned arm in arm, giggling as David unlocked the door. I was at the harpsichord and didn’t stop playing the Haydn as they settled back into their seating from earlier. 

As an aside, reader, the fact that that harpsichord remained in the rear parlor when any of my ‘family’ might’ve taken it into their own hands to rid themselves of it, well, my black little heart was warmed. No one ever played it other than myself and Claudia. Its continued presence in the flat was my secret sentimental tribute to her. If Louis was aware of this, he never discussed it with me. 

When the piece drew to a satisfying close, I remained still as the last notes played out into the room. It had felt so good to make this delicate but sturdy instrument sing again. Merrick immediately leapt to her feet, clapped and exclaimed, and said something about how I must teach her to play, there were so many instruments she could learn now! I noted that she had changed clothes, thankfully, and that there was a strange chemical odor wafting from her general vicinity. I took my place beside her, giving her a friendly kiss on both sides of her warmed face. Louis had chosen _her_ in my absence? It made no sense whatsoever. She behaved like a highly skilled sycophant, and he disliked being fawned over, or flattered at all, really. I knew this from _vast_ personal experience. Only the most genuine praise had a chance of acceptance; he equated disingenuity with offal. I eased in beside her but I watched her attentively, this onion needed to be unpeeled. 

Merrick launched into a report about her first kill, some thug of a pair who’d tried to rob them both. “I didn’t kill him, but I’m certain he died before we got back here.” She smiled.

“Why not kill him?” I said. 

“Once I drink from you, I can kill them," she said conspiratorially, her eyes lighting up. Swallowing the death, I assumed? Louis couldn’t possibly have told her to leave her victims breathing. "Men like that deserve to suffer a slow death. As a man, you can't know what I mean by what I say. You can't know a woman's vulnerability. You can't know the sense of power that belongs to me now." She had a dreamy look on her face, a crusader. “Besides, he couldn’t breathe, I crushed his throat just like-” she abruptly stopped. 

She waited a beat, moved her canvas bag between her feet as if we were on a crowded subway. “You know, how you were choking Louis. I wanted to try that…” she said, staring at her knees and smoothing the white silky fabric repeatedly. “Never choked anyone to death before.”

I waited a beat and then barked out a laugh. “That’ll do it! No, he certainly couldn’t live through that. Louis is made of stronger stuff, thankfully.” They nervously smiled back, let out breathy laughs. “If your victim was an evildoer of such high caliber, suffering might have been warranted.” 

"My heartfelt thanks go to both of you that you helped bring Louis back." I said. They nodded. “All my long life among the Undead, I searched for something which I had come to believe I would never possess.” I sighed. 

David couldn’t wait for me to continue. “What was it that you searched for?” Interviewing me, like he’d done as a mortal. Strange how a charming mortal trait becomes irritating and sinister when brought into the sharp focus of Being Dead. 

“What I searched for was a place, a place somewhere in which I would be a part of something greater than myself. It was to be other than a perfect outcast. It was to be with those who would enclose me in a group to which I truly belonged. But nowhere did I find this, until now." They both visibly relaxed. Good. 

“We’re a family, in the truest sense of the word. David, my child, one of my few chosen for the dark gift. Merrick, the beloved of my Louis. Chosen by him and made with such care.” I brushed a lock of hair behind her ear and she might as well have spread a vivid peacock tail out behind her. 

“How is Louis faring?” David asked.

“On the mend, David.” I smiled thinly without turning to him. “Definite improvement tonight.” 

“Can we see him?” Merrick piped up.

“He’s resting now, not a good time. But yes, eventually.” 

“If he’s resting, certainly us looking in on him from the doorway won’t bother him,” she said. “He’s my beloved maker, and I want to see him!” She rose, readying as if to go to a premiere, rather than, once again, what he really was: the barely managed mummy of the second floor of my flat. 

David took her hand, leashing her. “All in good time, dearest, let’s let Lestat decide, alright? We have more pressing things to discuss, don’t we?” She pouted and slumped back into her seat as primly as she was able. 

“Thank you, David,” I said. I turned to Merrick with a bright smile. “What’s a more pressing thing, love?” 

“I want to be as strong as you are, and as strong as David!” she said without an ounce of thought for the intimacy required for that request to be fulfilled. Like a child demanding a pony and having not a jot of an idea as to the feeding and care, just this naive vision of herself riding this magnificent snow white animal, galloping through the cobblestone streets of the French quarter, trampling anyone and everyone in her torpedoed way, should they be shorter than four feet high. She had just acquired immortality two nights before! Was that not enough for at least a week?

“For better or for worse I want to feel that I am one of you all!” she said. 

I put my hands on her shoulders reassuringly. “You are one of us, absolutely. Louis chose you, and so by default, you have my love as well. That’s what I was just saying, and I mean it completely, from the heart. We’ll see to it that you feel the same way.” 

I felt her heart quicken in her chest, under the swell of her breasts as she pressed them against me in a calculated hug. 

David, meanwhile, sat still, but I could see the jealousy rising in him like rippled heat off a griddle. Why hadn’t he simply offered her his blood? He was nearly as strong as I. No matter, I needed this excuse. I brushed her hair away from her neck and let my lips trail down, teasing her, tasting that skin. The choking cloying scent of some perfume assailed me. But there was a much harsher scent beneath those oily notes. _What was that smell?_

And then, the sly, clever beauty whispered into my ear: “Lestat, I have something which must be said.” 

I willed myself to keep my voice even. “Oh?” I simpered, pulling back.

“Yes,” she said. “I need to make a confession.” She looked away from me then, and glanced through the door, where the stairs led to my crippled lover. “And I fear you will be angry with me, but let me explain.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The investigation begins...


	7. Temporary Hiatus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Temporary Hiatus Notice

As mentioned in a reply to a comment on this fic, that I felt should be conveyed to anyone subscribed to this fic:

Some specific events happened in the world that made @Rebness and I take a big step back and question this fic's plan, moving forward from this point. We didn't think it would be this long of a break, it so happened that we were both deflated by what's happened in the world for the past few months.

This is a story we want to become legend, the truth of what happened in _Merrick_ , but in order for that to happen, we can't go for the low-hanging fruit of tropes that Mater went for. I admit we were going down a similar road that she paved. We can do better than that, and we want it to be worth our effort and worth your loyalty in coming along for the ride. So we're rerouting, and in the meantime, taking a hiatus from this fic to work on some other fic ideas we've had and partially formed.

I've felt (and I think @Rebness would agree on this, too) a little saddened that we had to stop the great momentum we'd built up with the frequency of posting chapters for this fic, but this fic is by no means dead, it's resting and we're plotting, and when we're ready we'll get back to cooking it up for you.

We can't wait to write what happens next, we're writing this to satisfy our own curiosity, and we are starving for the completion of this fic more than you are, trust me! 🔥🔥🔥

**Author's Note:**

> With special thanks to Cesare, Cygnaut and especially Alexa_Dean, to whom we gift this work.


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